A 24-year-old woman was blinded in her left eye after police fired a bean bag round at the car her boyfriend was driving early Tuesday morning. Dornella Conner of St. Louis went with her boyfriend to Ferguson on Monday night “just to be there,” her father told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Like the young people do, in support, like kids do, but no violence, not looting. She just wanted to be there.” Hours earlier, Conner had shared an illustration on Facebook that shows Michael Brown walking arm-in-arm with Trayvon Martin. “Feeling mad,” she wrote.
Police say Conner’s boyfriend, 21-year-old DeAngelas Lee, tried to run down a detective who was at a gas station parking lot in Ferguson at around 2 a.m. The detective allegedly feared for his life and fired the bean bag round into the car, which shattered the passenger-side window. Lee is now in custody, and court papers allege he acknowledged driving straight toward the police officer. Conner insists her boyfriend was trying to drive around the police, reports KMOV.
In a Facebook message, Conner, who goes by the name Lenora Prince, says she was not protesting and had gone to the gas station to get “gas and snacks.” In a separate message, Conner has vowed to fight. “I will have justices for what they did too me but I happy im alive thank u Jesus love u everyone,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, protests returned to Ferguson on Friday, and 16 people were arrested, 15 of whom were detained for misdemeanor peace disturbance. Only one of those arrested was from the St. Louis area, reports the Associated Press. The arrests came on the same day as demonstrators across the country descended on malls to protest the grand jury’s decision to not indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown. The demonstrations managed to briefly shut down a few Ferguson-area malls. Large protests were also held in Chicago, New York, Seattle, and northern California.
